BBC acquires two new Scandinavian dramas

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Even though other channels have cottoned onto the fact that Scandinavian drama, especially crime drama, is a hip thing, BBC4 is still the place that’s most associated with it. The channel played out the original version of Wallander, it broke The Killing and continued with The Bridge, and all were hugely successful creating a genre all of its own. With Danish period drama 1864 coming up next weekend (it’s not a crime drama), the channel has bolstered its slate of Scandinavian crime series with the procurement of two new shows – one from Denmark and the other from Iceland.

Follow The Money is a new crime thriller set in the world of economic crime. It is the story of speculators, swindlers and corporate princes and the crimes they commit in the pursuit of wealth.

When a dead body is found in the sea near a wind farm off the coast of Denmark, Mads, the police detective assigned to the investigation, refuses to believe that it is just an accident. The deeper he digs, the more suspicious he becomes of quickly expanding energy company Energen and is drawn into a morass of financial and legal shady dealings…

Elsewhere, TBI Vision reports that the channel has also snapped up Icelandic thriller, Trapped.

The series is set in a small Icelandic town in which a mutilated body is found as a blizzard sets in, trapping its inhabitants.

The site then goes on to say:

It comes from Iceland’s best-known contemporary filmmaker, Kormákur, who is producing and directing. His prodco, RVK Studios, is making the series and the cast includes Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (True Detective) and Bjarne Henriksen (The Killing).

Cassian Harrison, editor, BBC Four, said: “BBC Four leads the way with international drama, drawn from a brand range of different countries, and I’m very pleased to be bringing this compelling, atmospheric thriller – our first from Iceland – to the channel.”

So, unlike Fortitude, Trapped will Icelandic talent in front and behind the camera, which sounds promising.

What’s important is that BBC4 has kept the Scandinavian gravadlax train going when others were starting to snap up anything that had a whiff of Swedish, Norwegian or Danish about it.